Mucho Locos (Merrie Melodies)

Mucho Locos (episode 964)
"The duck estupido!"
Directed by: Robert McKimson Written by: Dave Detiege Release date: February 5, 1966 Franchise: Merrie Melodies Prequel: "Out and Out Rout" (previous short) Sequel: "The Solid TIn Coyote" (next short)

Mucho Locos is a 1966 Merrie Melodies short directed by Robert McKimson. In this short, Speedy Gonzales and a little boy mouse watch a broken television set in a junkyard using their imaginations to create a picture. They imagine clips from old Warner cartoons, about the "smart mouse" (Speedy) and the "stupid duck" (Daffy).

Why It "Estupido!"s

1. Much like its precursors such as "Devil's Feud Cake" and "Freudy Cat", this short is entirely a filler clip show short due to the cartoon reusing stock footage from "Robin Hood Daffy", "Tortilla Flaps", "Deduce, You Say", "Mexicali Shmoes" and "China Jones".
2. Due to heavy budget cuts, unlike the previous clip show episodes seen during the classic era, DePatie-Freleng Enterprises was unable to use the original animation from the classic era shorts shown here, and everything had to be redrawn from scratch. As a result, this short suffers from large amounts of animation errors, for example, Señor Vulturo's color scheme is black, instead of blue in his first appearance, "Tortilla Flaps" and many colors of clothing do not match those in the original shorts.
   • At one point, a cel-number actually appears when Manuel waves his sombrero over a stick of lit dynamite.
   • Granted, in a later, far superior clip show-based Looney Tunes TV special Bugs Bunny's Overtures to Disaster from 1991 did have a musical scene from the classic Looney Tunes cartoon "Back Alley Oproar" (1948) featuring Sylvester and Elmer Fudd redrawn from scratch (while still retaining the original audio) because of Turner Entertainment at the time owning the rights of the original footage of said cartoon via the sales of a.a.p. and various mergers like United Artists and MGM, but at least it had far better animation than this cartoon despite the smaller television budgets, which makes this cartoon's low-quality redrawn sequences (and replaced soundtrack) even more unacceptable since this cartoon was produced for a theatrical release which generally had larger production budgets than television cartoons, at least at the time when this cartoon was made (though to be fair, it's due to the massive budget cuts at the time this cartoon was made).
3. The recycled Dragon Lady scene from "China Jones" can be offensive, which was cut from CBS telecasts and rarely airs on American broadcasts today.
4. Poor sound editing, for example, Señor Vulturo's screams changed to Daffy's "Ho! Ha-Ha!" in different pitches.
5. Laughable and cheesy dialogue likes "The duck estupido!".
6. As in the previous shorts, Daffy still treats Speedy offensively.
7. Bad ending: Daffy finally slams Speedy with a wooden mallet, giving him a headache. Worse, unlike most other cartoons this is the only one of two episodes (The other one being "Chili Corn Corny") where Daffy is actually shown to be successful in defeating Speedy, hence making him a huge Karma Houdini.
8. False advertising: While one of the lobby cards of the cartoon depicts Speedy narrowly dodging the mallet which Daffy uses to smack him, the actual cartoon short itself depicts the exact opposite as Daffy successfully slams Speedy with the mallet immediately in one attempt with Speedy failing to dodge said attack.

Redeeming Qualities

1. Speedy Gonzales and mouse Jose are the only likable characters here in this short.
2. Herman Stein's music score here is an improvement over William Lava's scores in the previous shorts, even if said music score aged poorly.
3. Mel Blanc does a good job voicing the characters, as always.
4. Daffy at least does have a proper reason to attack Speedy here, as he overhears Speedy calling him stupid and wants revenge over that, even if it is taken a bit too far.

Trivia

• As opposed to previous clip show shorts which use unmodified archive footage from previous cartoons, this short heavily relies entirely on new animation made up entirely of recycled animation from previous shorts, complete with newly-recorded dialogue and music. This short uses clips that are re-animated and re-dubbed from "Robin Hood Daffy" (1958), "Tortilla Flaps" (1958), "Deduce, You Say" (1956), "Mexicali Shmoes" (1959), and "China Jones" (1959).
  • It is also the last clip show short in the Golden Age of Animation.
• This is the final short to feature Porky Pig in the Golden Age of American Animation, albeit via footage taken from "Robin Hood Daffy".
• This was the second of three times that Daffy defeated Speedy, with the others being "Chili Corn Corny" and "Feather Finger". This is also the only of two Golden Age short where Speedy is unambiguously defeated.
• When the short was shown on The Bugs Bunny Show, the title was changed to Muchos Locos.
• This is the only Looney Tunes or Merrie Melodies short scored by Herman Stein.
• MeTV aired a previously unreleased restored print of this cartoon on Toon In with Me.
• The MeTV restoration has a fake cutaway from the opening sequence to the title card, as with the other handful of 1960s cartoons' restorations.

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